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You'd think so, but it took a decade until Snowden was the first one of these 10,000 engineers to speak up.

• jonny_eh 13y ago
  That's because it's super easy to rationalize things like this. From the outside, hearing about Intro for the first time, our initial reaction may be "WTF?". But from inside the company it was a slow boil. You know that you mean no harm, and the people you work with are good people, and they mean no harm either. And hey, you're taking all these precautions like using separate servers, and getting security audit checks. And hey, isn't this a clever way to add a cool feature? Before you know it, it's too late to say "no". Something that may have started as a good idea has transformed into a monster. Human cognitive biases will then kick into action and save you from admitting to yourself that you're part of the problem.
  • wellboy 13y ago
    That's an excellent description, gradual escalation. For that reason, there need to be very strong company values. Further, every engineer needs to be very reflective and have very strong values themselves, because most companies don't have these strong values. This should be started to be taught at universities now, so that young engineers have some guidance to start out with. Engineer Ethics Lecture 1.